One thing I agree upon with Mr. Obama: What kind of country ...? #1 in a series of questions by Gnome

Mr. Obama says that it is more than health care. He says it is about what kind of country we want the U.S. to be.

Here, I agree. What kind of country do we want America to be? One of many reasons for the backlash against Obamacare has been the huge number of fundamental social questions being addressed with little or no national dialogue. Rushing through huge programs which change many basic American freedoms and many things we take for granted.

I hope to post a series of questions, to identify some of these very basic questions.

Here, I'm asking:
Do we want to be the kind of country that makes health insurance coverage compulsory?*

In order to accomplish this, some of the bills currently in Washington actually empower the IRS to enforce compulsory participation. If you are forced to pay, your employer is forced to pay, or your employer is fined, it all works out about the same. Your employer pays you and has the added expense of employing you tacked on. That is money that cannot go into your paycheck.

Do we as a country choose to require everyone to have health insurance? During the Democrat party primary, Mr. Obama was the only major candidate who opposed such compulsory participation, and he criticized Hilary's compulsory plan. Now, his is just as offensive.

Furthermore, the plans currently in Washington will mandate all kinds of coverage, and control the types of policies the government would "approve." So, if you are a 22-year-old, your premiums will be far higher under these proposed plans than if you got your own coverage today. Higher because you would not have the freedom (according to CNN/Money) to choose a skimpy coverage, high deductable, low premium policy. Also, you would be mandated to take coverage that included, for example, knee replacement even though you're 22 and not at all likely to need it. That's one way these plans try to balance the books, charge the low-risk younger citizens more to provide for the elders and more sickly, such as the 60-year-old who actually does need a new knee.

Mr. Obama says that requiring all Americans to have health insurance is like the auto insurance requirement. Wrong. Women pay less for auto insurance because they're lower risk. All the current proposals seem to go the opposite way: pay more for lower risk.

So, the government compells you to have health insurance, and decides what should be in that policy. If you are prolife, you are forced to pay for coverage for abortions against your conscience. But aside from that small matter [lol] the reach of government is hugely multiplied. Do we choose this?

borrowed from Hot air blog:
Let us not forget the Vision of
Frank Zappa
when he wrote in 1979

This Is The Central Scrutinizer

It is my responsibility to enforce all the laws that haven’t been passed yet. It is also my responsibility to alert each and every one of you to the potential
consequences of various ordinary everyday activities you might be performing which could eventually lead to The Death Penalty (or affect your parents’
credit rating). Our criminal institutions are full of little creeps like you who do wrong things…and many of them were driven to these crimes by a horrible
force called MUSIC!

Our studies have shown that this horrible force is so dangerous to society at large that laws are being drawn up at this very moment to stop it forever!
Cruel and inhuman punishments are being carefully described in tiny paragraphs so they won’t conflict with the Constitution (which, itself, is being modified
in order to accommodate THE FUTURE).

that's a great story, I'd heard bits of it. here's what I like the best, Mr. Obama's own words during the Dem primary:
"Now, under any mandate, you are going to have problems with people who don't end up having health coverage," Mr. Obama said during a
debate
with Clinton on Jan. 31, 2008. "I think we can anticipate that there would also be people potentially who are not covered and are actually hurt if they
have a mandate imposed on them."

---and are actually hurt if they have a mandate imposed on them. can we get back that more intelligent Mr. Obama?

The Christian Science Monitor [not known as a right wing hit squad] link posted above, and this link:
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/22/can-congress-force-me-to-buy-health-insurance/comment-page-1
elaborate how it is apparently unconstitutional to impose a compulsory health insurance upon every one, violating the 5th, 9th, and 13th amendments to the U.S. constitution.
personally, I think that using the IRS as the enforcer, the government would then be violating the 4th amendment too.

and, one of the questions to be discussed in a coming blog: if government compells you to have health insurance, and it mandates all kinds of coverage, then why can't government regulate your behavior?